Jack Dorsey Commits $1 Billion to Nonprofits, Including COVID-19 Relief

Other areas of focus will be girls' education, UBI

Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey is making a substantial contribution to coronavirus relief efforts.
Mark Warner/Creative Commons

The response to the public health and economic emergencies sparked by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has come from all sides. In the United States, that’s included everything from federal and state governments to wealthy donors to everyday people contributing to nonprofit organizations and fundraisers for those affected. And now, a big name in the tech community has announced his own contribution to the ongoing struggle, and it’s a big one.

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, took to social media to announce that he was donating $1 billion in equity in Square to Start Small LLC. The first priority? Coronavirus relief efforts around the globe. Following that, Dorsey plans to focus on health and education for young women, as well as efforts towards a Universal Basic Income.

Dorsey also announced that these efforts would be publicly trackable via a Google document.

In a followup Tweet, Dorsey explained his rationale for his focus. “I believe [girls’ education and UBI] represent the best long-term solutions to the existential problems facing the world,” he wrote.

Last year at Forbes, Biz Carson explored Start Small’s structure and finances, as it’s a subject that Dorsey has spoken about in interviews over the years.

In Square’s IPO filing, the company discloses that the Start Small Foundation is actually a donor-advised fund through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which means that Dorsey gave some of his shares to an account that must be used for a charitable purpose at some point in the future.

As of this writing, the Google Document Dorsey made available for tracking purposes lists one donation so far — $100,000 to America’s Food Fund to aid people who have been adversely affected by COVID-19.

“Why the transparency?” Dorsey wrote in another Tweet. “It’s important to show my work so I and others can learn.” Hopefully this promise will be kept — and hopefully it will prompt more of the country’s very wealthy to do the same.

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